Simon Coulthard September 04, 2023
Oslo – Datatilsynet, Norway’s Data Protection Authority, is fining Meta Platforms 1 million krone per day, or roughly $98,500.
Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, is being penalized for alleged data privacy breaches, and the potential impact of this on Norway residents.
Datatilsyne has also banned Facebook and Instagram from carrying out any behavioral advertising activities, initially until October.
Read more about this story on the Datatilsynet website.
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Datatilsynet announced in July its intention to start fining Meta if the company failed to address the identified privacy breaches.
However its issues in Norway go deeper, with the DPA taking issue with Meta’s ongoing violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a law that protects the misuse and abuse of EU resident personal data.
The dispute centers around Meta’s approach to behavioral sementation in advertising. The company has allegedly been using large amounts of user data – including geolocations – in targeted advertising campaigns. Consequently, Datatilsynet has banned such activities within Norwegian borders.
This is no small thing, with the company collecting data on what people post or comment, the unencrypted messages sent and received, hashtag usage and so forth. And when brought together, this information can be used to reveal incredibly personal information about users, from musical tastes and menstrual cycles to addictions and wider health issues.
By acting upon its previous threats, Datatilsynet made clear its dissatisfaction with the solutions that Meta proposed since July.
Their plan was to request EU customers for consent for advertisement targeting, with data captured from their in-platform behavior. Datatilsynet felt this insufficient, and that Meta should instead halt any data processing until an effective consent mechanism is activated.
Neither Facebook nor Instagram is banned in Norway. But the sentence underlines Datatilsynet efforts to persuade Meta to bring its data practices in line with EU standards. Norway’
